rally, they were dissatisfied with this arrangement and their
enrollment became a burning question of Roman politics. Henceforth all
Italians were Romans and in the course of the next generation the various
racial elements of Italy were gradually welded into a Latin nation. As it
was impossible for the magistrates of Rome to oversee the administration
throughout so wide an area, the Romans organized the Italian towns into
locally self-governing municipalities of the type previously established
on Roman territory. At first these municipalities retained many of their
ancestral laws, customs and institutions, but in time they conformed to a
uniform type, the government of which was modelled upon that of the
capital city Rome. The municipalities were powerful agents in the
Latinization of the peninsula.

VIII. THE FIRST MITHRADATIC WAR

*Mithradates VI., Eupator, King of Pontus.* The danger which in 89 B. C.
directed the attention of the Senate to the eastern Mediterranean was the
result of the establishment of the Kingdom of Pontus under an able and
ambitious ruler, Mithradates Eupator, who challenged the supremacy of Rome
in Asia Minor. In 121 B. C. Mithradates had succeeded to the throne of
northern Cappadocia, a small kingdom on the south shore of the Black Sea,
whose Asiatic population was imbued with Hellenistic culture and whose
rulers claimed descent from the ancient royal house of Persia and from
Seleucus, the founder of the Macedonian kingdom of Syria. For seven years
Mithradates shared the throne with his brother, under his mother's
regency, but in 114 when eighteen years of age, he seized the reins of
government for himself. Subsequently he extended his power over the
eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea as far west as the Danube and
thus built up the kingdom of Pontus, i. e. the coast land of the Black
Sea, a name which later was applied to his native state of north
Cappadocia.

*His **conflict** with Rome.* However, Mithradates also sought to extend
his sway in Asia Minor, where Greater Cappadocia became the object of his
ambitions. This brought him into conflict with Rome, whose policy was to
prevent the rise of any dangerous neighbor in the East and who refused to
suffer her settlement of Asia Minor to be disturbed. No less than five
times did Mithradates, between 112 and 92 B. C., attempt to bring this
district under his control, but upon each occasion he was forced by Ro